Exaggerate the faculty of acquisitiveness, and it becomes avariciousness. Develop secretiveness and selfishness, and they become cunning and profligacy, desperation and crime. Their functional development tends to produce physical disorder and violent disease. All of these faculties are vehement, contentious, thriving by opposition. Life itself has been called a forced state, because it wars with the elements it appropriates, and transmutes their powers into vitality.
We find men and women of this temperament, who are models of character and organization. George Washington is an excellent illustration. The impression that his presence made upon the Marquis de Chastellux, is given in the following words: "I wish only to express the impression General Washington has left on my mind; the idea of a perfect whole, brave without temerity, laborious without ambition, generous without prodigality, noble without pride, virtuous without severity." Gen. Scott, Lord Cornwallis, Dr. Wistar, Bishop Soule John Bright, Jenny Lind Goldsmidt, and Dr. Gall are good representatives of this temperament. Fig. 86 is an excellent illustration of it, finely blended and well balanced, in the person of Madame de Stael. This temperament requires fewer tonics and stimulants than the lymphatic. This constitution is best able to restore vital losses. It is a vital temperament, in other words, it combines favorably with all the others, and better adapts itself to their various conditions. Some regard it as the best adjusted one in all its organs and tissues, and as the most satisfactory and serviceable.
Excess of nutrition tends to plethora, to animal indulgence, and gross sensuality. Not only do the propensities rouse desire, but they excite the basilar faculties, and portray their wants in the outlines of the face, mould the features to their expression, and flash their significance from the eye. Who can mistake the picture of sensuality represented by Fig. 87? It is enough to shock the sensibility of a dumb animal, and to say that such a face has a beastly look, is an unkind reflection upon the brute creation. A large neck and corresponding development of the occipital half of the brain indicate nervous energy, yet nutrition is not absolutely dependent upon it, for the nutritive processes are active before a nervous system is formed. The lower faculties of the mind exert a remarkable influence over nutrition, secretion, and the molecular changes incident to life. Anger or fear may transmute the mother's nourishing milk into a virulent poison. The following incident, taken from Dr. Carpenter's Physiology, illustrates this statement: "A carpenter fell into a quarrel with a soldier billeted in his house, and was set-upon by the latter with his drawn sword. The wife of the carpenter at first trembled from fear and terror, and then suddenly threw herself between the combatants, wrested the sword from the soldier's hand, broke it in pieces, and threw it away. During the tumult, some neighbors came-in and separated the men. While in this state of strong excitement, the mother took up her child from the cradle, where it lay playing, and in the most perfect health, never having had a moment's illness; she gave it the breast, and in so doing sealed its fate. In a few minutes the infant left-off sucking, became restless, panted, and sank dead upon the mother's bosom. The physician who was instantly called-in, found the child lying in the cradle, as if asleep, and with its features undisturbed; but all resources were fruitless. It was irrecoverably gone. In this interesting case, the milk must have undergone a change, which gave it a powerful sedative action upon the susceptible nervous system of the infant."
Anxiety, irritation, hatred, all tend to the vitiation of the disposition and bodily functions, perverting the character and constitution at the same time. Depravity of thought and secretion go together. Degradation of mind and corruption of the body are concomitants. There is a very close affinity between mental and moral perversion and physical prostitution, of which fact too many are unconscious. Nervous influence preserves the fluidity of the blood and facilitates its circulation, for it appears that simple arrestment of this influence favors the coagulation of the blood in the vessels; clots being found in their trunks within a few minutes after the brain and spinal marrow are broken down. Habitual constipation is the source of many ills. Perversion of the functions of the stomach, and of the circulation of the blood, produce general disaster.
Diseases which characterize this temperament are acute, violent, or inflammatory, indicating repletion and active congestion; intense inflammation, burning fevers, severe rheumatism, a quick, full pulse, great bodily heat, and functional excitement are its morbid accompaniments. These diseases will bear thorough depletion of the alimentary canal, active, hydragogue cathartics being indicated. Sedatives and anodynes are also essential to modify the circulatory forces, and to relieve pain. Violent disturbance must be quelled, and among the remedial agents required for this duty we may include Veratrum, Ipecac, Digitalis, Opium, Conium, and Asclepias. While equalizing the circulatory fluids, restoring the secretions, and thoroughly evacuating the system, and thus endeavoring to remove disturbing causes, we find that the conditions of this temperament are exceedingly favorable for restoration to health. True, many chronic diseases are obstinate, yet a course of restorative medication persistently followed, promises a fortunate issue in this tractile temperament.
Hygienic management of the lymphatic and sanguine temperaments consists in the vigorous toning of the former, while restraint of the latter will greatly exempt it from the anxieties, contentions, and vexations which excite the mind, disturb the bodily functions, and end in chronic disease. People of the latter organization love mental and physical stimulants, are easily inflamed by passion, and their excitability degenerates into irritability, succeeded by serious functional derangements, which prematurely break down the individual with inveterate, deep-seated disorder. Serenity, hope, faith, as well as firmness, are natural hygienic elements. It is a duty we owe ourselves to promptly relinquish a business which corrodes with its cares, and depresses with its increasing troubles. Constant solicitude, and the apprehension of financial disaster, frustrate the bodily functions, disconcert the organic processes, and lead to mental aberration as well as physical degeneracy. Melancholy is chronic, while despair is acute mania, whose impulses drive the victim desperately toward self-destruction. The chronic derangement of these organs exerts with less force the same morbid tendency. Hence the necessity for exercising those hygienic and countervailing influences born of resolution, assurance, and confident trust, and the belief which strengthens all of the vital operations.
Doubtless, this temperament is the source of the reproductive powers. It is the corner-stone essential to the foundation of all other temperaments. It has been supposed by some that the cerebellum is the seat of sexual instinct. The fact appears that an ample development of the posterior base of the cerebrum and the cerebellum indicates nutritive activity, which is certainly a condition most favorable to the display of amativeness. In a double sense, then, this temperament is a vital one; both by nutritive repletion, and by reproduction. It is the blood-manufacturing, tissue-generating, and body-constructing temperament, causing growth to exceed waste, and promptly repairing the wear which follows continual labor.